Meep

Wellbutrin is the THIRD MOST COMMOM CAUSE of drug-related new onset seizures, after cocaine intoxication and benzo withdrawal. Not even NDRIs in general, JUST WELLBUTRIN. Numbers are reported between 1 in 1000 and 1 in 250 for these affected, but I suspect even those are severely underreported.

Why?

Well, as you may have already guessed by the fact that I care, I was prescribed Wellbutrin a few years ago and it gave me seizures. Obviously a sample size of one is not significant, but let me explain.

Even as I was regaining consciousness on the floor at work, very confused and feeling like I'd been hit by a truck, with another manager on top of me asking me if I'd ever had a seizure before, I was rolling my eyes because he was obviously being dramatic. Clearly I'd just fainted because of my blood pressure or something. A seizure? Don't be ridiculous.

After my ER visit, I watched the security camera footage of myself convulsing on the floor, and I said oh fuck, I had a seizure.

If you have a seizure, and you don't know what a seizure feels like, and nobody else was around to witness it, you will never know you had a seizure. You will not witness your own seizure, you will be too busy using 100% of your brain having a seizure.

The reason I bring this up is because last night, I was taking to a friend, and he asked me if I'd ever taken a different medication and had any thoughts because his doctor had just put him on it. I told him I hadn't, but I could tell him I definitely didn't recommend Wellbutrin, and relayed all of the above. He told me his doctor had actually just taken him OFF Wellbutrin after like three years.

"I wonder if I ever had seizures. I guess I wouldn't know."

"Did you ever have a thing happen where it felt like your brain just suddenly stopped working completely? Like there was just a wall between you and all of your thoughts? Like when a word is on the tip of your tongue, except it's your entire brain?"

"...far too many times."

"Was that ever followed by a sudden wave of heat and weakness through your body? Like you got super sweaty out of nowhere and it just felt like something was very, very wrong?"

"...yeeeaaaah, I've had a lot of seizures."

"Ever woken up somewhere very confused how you got there with your tongue hurting like a motherfucker?"

"...fuck, I think I used to have them in my sleep."

So that's already crazy, to have a friend casually inform you that oh, by the way, you've been having seizures for years. But then, in relaying THAT story to my roommate, as I described what the onset symptoms felt like, his eyes went wide, and he said:

"Oh fuck, is THAT what that was? I used to take Wellbutrin and that happened to me once. I woke up lying down on the porch with a broken nose."

"Was your tongue fucked up and chewed to shit like bubble gum?"

"Yup."

"Yup."

"I've been wondering for YEARS what that was."

So now it's a sample size of three, which is still nothing, but knowing what I know from my own experience, I think there are a lot more people on this drug than anybody realizes who are being affected by this. They just never realize they're having seizures in the first place, so those numbers are never reported.